There are two quite different types of electronic networks that are evolving: a standard telephone network and a data network (e.g., the Internet). The standard telephone network, such as a wireless telephony network and the POTS network, is designed to carry real-time messaging content. Capacity is allocated in real-time bandwidth and once you have a connection of adequate bandwidth established between two points, data that is delayed is viewed as a network fault. Examples of communications that may be carried via a standard telephone network(s) include voice communications, multi-party conference calls, video conference calls, or the like.
Another characteristic of standard telephone networks is that each network is typically owned and controlled by a small number (typically a single company in the case of wireless networks) of large companies that historically have provided service directly to end users of the network and therefore have a billing type relationship with them. Where a connection is made through the facilities of another provider, there is typically a commercial contract in place between the two companies. These standard telephone networks, in part because of the relatively close relationship between the service vendors and network users, have the characteristic that the originator of a call can be readily identified, allowing “caller ID” service to be readily implemented and to be widely known and in fact expected.
In contrast, the second type of network (e.g., data networks such as the Internet, LANs, WANs, VPNs, and the like) were designed to move mostly one-way, non-real time data from point to point. In this type of network, the delay of data has typically not been regarded as a network fault. Additionally, some data networks, particularly the Internet, are far more disjoint than a standard telephone network. There are many more companies involved, and there is much less control of individual point-to-point end-user connections. It is typical that a company that provides transmission of data on the Internet has a tenuous commercial relationship with the originators of most of the data packets that it is carrying. In fact, many Internet service providers (ISPs) protect the privacy and anonymity of their subscribers.
This tenuous commercial relationship with end users coupled with the relative ease with which the end-user computers that originate much of the traffic on the Internet can be anonymously enlisted in the service of third parties, leads to the fact that a “caller ID” type service is nearly impossible to implement on the Internet.
In recent years, these data networks have begun to evolve to provide real-time, two-way communications between parties. The communications may include, for example, voice-over-IP (VoIP), instant messaging, interactive video conferencing (e.g., web meetings), or the like.
Using the electronic data networks for real-time, two-way communications provides several advantages. In particular, using these electronic networks for real-time, two-way communications is relatively low cost and easily accessible. The proliferation of networks throughout today's society, particularly the Internet, has ensured ready access to a communications device capable of communicating with any other individual communicatively coupled to the same network. Essentially anyone with a computer, a personal data assistant, a wireless telephone, or the like can connect to the Internet and communicate with someone at a remote location within seconds. Likewise, companies can use internal networks (e.g., WANs, VPNs, or the like) to allow geographically dispersed employees to communicate in real-time using many of the same technologies. Notably, the communications can frequently occur with equipment already purchased as networks and access devices are generally already in place to handle data needs.
As this type of communication becomes more widespread, it will inevitably become a target for advertisers and telemarketers as a method to distribute advertising messages in vast quantities. Because of the low cost of distributing massive amounts of advertising, advertisers can economically transmit advertising communications with response rates that are orders of magnitude less than would be necessary to support more traditional means of advertising. Additionally, as discussed above, anonymity given to the sender prevents “do not call” lists and caller-ID type mechanisms from providing an adequate solution.
Electronic mail (e-mail) has already seen this problem. E-mail is a store-and-forward communications method in which one-way communications (as opposed to a two-way communications) are sent from one network node to another network node until the final destination is reached, where a recipient may or may not retrieve a message or respond. Because e-mail is inexpensive and advertisers can transmit massive amounts of e-mail quickly (and often automatically), e-mail advertisements (e.g., junk e-mail) are becoming a burden to networks and users alike. This use of e-mail to send massive amounts of advertisements is known as the e-mail “spam” problem.
In order to enable real-time messaging (RTM) over the previously data oriented structure of the Internet, an infrastructure of real time messaging protocols has been developed and deployed. The protocols include H.323; “Packet-based Multimedia Communications Systems”, International Telecommunications Union, February 1998, RFC 3261, “SIP: Session Initiation Protocol”, Internet Engineering Task Force, March 1999, (SIP) for establishing real time communication sessions and RFC 1889; “RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real Time Applications” (RTP), Internet Engineering Task Force, March 1999, for transmission of real time data streams.
These RTM protocols, however, have the same characteristic as the Internet's email protocol (e.g., SMTP) in that they do not provide a reliable way of identifying the sender of a message or the initiator of a telephony connection, and of course they share the same transmission media and therefore the same cost structure as email.
It is important to note that unsolicited RTM messages differ from email spam in a number of important ways and therefore optimal solutions for identifying and suppressing unsolicited RTM messages are likely to differ from strategies that would be most effective on email spam. For example, RTM, is primarily interactive and involves the receiving person being interrupted. This is true whether the receiving individual chooses to accept the incoming RTM messaging session or not. A ringing phone or an incoming RTM message demands an immediate response, if only to choose not to accept the call. With unsolicited RTM messages, therefore, damage and expense has occurred before any message content has been transmitted and suppression techniques during the session initiation phase are more important for RTM messages.
A system that is currently used to identify callers in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) is that network's ‘Caller ID’ system. In this case an identification string associated with the source of an incoming telephone call is transferred to a display device at the receiving end of a telephone call between the first and second ring. The contents of the identification string is information that is entered into a database by the phone company that the originating caller has contracted with for telephone service. Because the phone companies typically sell suppression of this string as an ‘unlisted number’ service, it is of limited use in the suppression of unsolicited/unwanted RTM messages.
In addition, when messages originate from devices connected to the Internet, as opposed to the PSTN itself, there is no guarantee that reliable caller ID data will be available.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and system to provide RTM end users with the ability to identify unsolicited and/or unwanted RTM connections or messages and, preferably, to control those messages, such as by filtering them into those that are to be received immediately and those that are to be suppressed, diverted or acted on automatically in some other way.